The Messengers
by BeffyBreazzzy
Summary: Well, I've been wanting to write on this site forever now, so I thought I'd try a new story out to debut it here first. Mainly, the only thought I have is of a girl whom, and her home town, is attacked by these three witches...The witches are after her.


There are forces at work that none really know anything about. Well, my brother and I do. We know about them; we know what they do, how they act... and what they eat. If you could imagine the clash of the Greek Titans, then you can't imagine what this war is going to end up as. This is like nothing we've ever seen before, nothing we can deal with, but there is one thing we can do...Hide. For if they find us, we're dead anyways.

**Old Wive's Tales and a Copper Cup**

My grandmother once told my brother Toby and I that there were forces that would kill her one day; we all thought nothing of it, that she was crazy like the people in the old folks home said she was. Now, as we lay her to rest in a mangled dress and a heap of stitched flesh, all of our inquiries and everything we know is being tested.

I could stand here, enjoying this nice breeze all day; standing beside my little brother of merely ten years old, I could stand here and watch the lilies float across the small stream behind my grandmother's plot, the small birds chirping and frolicking in the leaves, the small fish bobbing out of the crisp blue water for specs of bread the mourners had dropped for them, the grass and trees swaying in the wind...I could watch it all, just to take my mind off of the real problem at hand, my grandmother's death.

She was so beautiful, so full of wrinkly life when I last saw her; her dentures were always pearly white, her mouth always formed in a perfect smile despite her sagging lip from her last stroke, and the very essence of her breath barely beading past me to get to her music notes so she could teach me to play piano. I had so many memories with her, memories that would die here, in this plot, right next to her. I felt a tear drop down my cheek, there was nothing left to say, better to bury her now, than let her bake in this small wave of sunlight creeping under this huge canopy of trees. All these people came to mourn, probably all just faking it to see what she left them in her will. I'm not going to lie, my grandma and grandpa were rich beyond any measure; when my granddad died, he left half of everything to his wife, and half to charity. It pissed off a bunch of our kin.

Toby turned and cradled his head into the nook of my arm, tears soaking into my black dress; "Why was it her? She never hurt nobody..." A huge gasp of sobs followed. I tried shushing him, so our step-dad wouldn't hear him- he was an ex-army general that led an onslaught in Baghdad, he'd beat Toby for just whimpering like this- I had to hide him to let him mourn.

I glanced over to our mom, she had blotchy red cheeks, and a black handkerchief dabbing away tears, as Garry, our mom's husband, held her close against his old Army Uniform. I despised him, I hated him, I wanted him gone. He put Toby through hell, and told him, point blank, he was going into the army when he turned eighteen.

I'm seventeen, getting ready for college next spring, going in for a major in Bio-Tech and advanced Chemical Engineering, what I want to do. I've never been really religious, just mildly spiritual. Being raised with a mother and step-father who are so into Christianity that they breathe and eat it, it's hard to decipher your own path and your own views of the world. So, Toby would be lucky to get out alive.

I snuggled my little brother closer to me, edging closer and closer towards the huge cement vaults in the back of the cemetery. My poor, sleepless, exhausted body couldn't do this anymore. I was too tired and too worn to even try to stand any longer, let alone protect my brother from that creature my mother called a man. Toby followed respectfully behind me, marching nearly on the heels of my new high heel shoes mom had bought me.

"Aery, why'd grandma die? Why?" He whimpered, balling his fists into tight little clusters and trying to keep pace with me.

"I don't know, Tobes, I don't know."I felt the agitation in my own body, the very mention of death sent chills down my spine; I couldn't have answered that question anyways.

That night, we all gathered at my uncle's farm. He had cooked a huge meal for everyone and had decided that it was time to tell us all what new concoction he had been working on. My uncle Joe, he was weird man, good man, but weird. He always had some new device he was working on, or some new piece of equipment that he thought he'd have to have. Oh yeah, Uncle Joe worked for the CIA. He created their weapons, he created the very suits they had to wear to stay one step ahead of masterminds.

Uncle Joe's job was based solely off of the way Uncle Henry made a living; Henry La Haile made his living by staging robberies and literally getting by with blindsiding banks. In all honesty, the way he worked, he was a pro-he got in, he got out and no one saw him, or if they did, they knew better than to speak of it.

I had arrived late,after everyone else, because I had had to change and wait on my clothes to finish drying. I trudged over the thick, pot-hole infested dirt road and sat by my brother, watching as the rest of my family gathered around Uncle Joe's porch with plates filled high and cups filled to the brim with various liquors.

Among the huge crowd, I spotted Aunt Dorian, a beast of a woman, at least three hundred pounds, stick half of the sliced ham into her purse, gazing around wildly to see whom had spotted her disgusting proclamation of who's ham it truly was.

I giggled, causing Micah, a friend of our family's who probably was around my age, and Toby to look at me in a befuddled amazement.

"What?" I coughed out, still laughing over her burly choice.

"What's funny?" Toby whispered, looking around. For a ten year old, he was very keen to detail and he knew just about everything but this had him flabbergasted.

I pointed to our aunt, "You see aunt Dorian, she just stuffed the whole ham-hock in her purse, I bet Ol' Yeller will fight her over it." I died laughing, switching my pointing finger at the old, tattered yellow-looking lab in the fence behind uncle Joe's log house. His house always reminded me of a log cabin out of a lumberjack movie.

Mom handed me a copper drinking tin, "Grandma's favorite cup." She smiled, clutching my hands around the warm tin. I looked inside as she handed my brother a coffee mug filled with the same liquid.

Before I could stop myself, I sniffed it, causing Micah to snort a laugh as he sat beside me, "It's just sider, with a hint of burlap sap and gin."

"I don't drink." My mom knew that.

Toby sniffed his cup, "Looks like mom thinks you should." He took a sip of his, a brown liquid residue on his upper lip.

"What is that?" I pointed.

"Hot chocolate." He smiled, sipping more of the liquid.

I cuddled next to my brother, holding the copper tin close in my hands.

Micah took off his jacket and wrapped it around my shivering shoulders, "You need it more than I do."

I looked up into his crystal blue eyes, "Thank you." I stared at him for a moment after that, catching a light shade of green encircled around his pupils.

"You're welcome." He pulled his knees up close to him, leaning his forearms on them and then looking out over the huge crowd of people dancing like nothing had happened, dangling his plastic cub between his knees.

"You're Roy and Barbara's son?" I whispered, trying to converse the awkward silence.

"Yeah, my mom died last year, 'round this time." He said in a gentle voice.

I had never really noticed how nice he smelled, not like axe and body odor-like most guys, but he smelled really nice, like woodsy-odor-nice. He was gorgeous, nearly all of the girls in my high school wanted him. I'd never seen him there, but everyone knew of him, we even had plaques of all of his achievements around the school: football quarter back-led the team to victory in the championships, star athlete-six time competitive runner for the track team, baseball hero..etc. He was so nice and so level-headed, not letting his fame get to him.

"I'm sorry."

"Natural causes." He smiled, " 'Least it was a proper burial."

"Yeah, thank goodness for that." I pulled my knees up to my chest, scared to breathe with him this close to me as I laid my head on my arms, and I was terrified of speaking to him again. It was just him that gave me this feeling, like I was immobilized when he came around. I had a crush on him, but that was nothing new that I couldn't deal with, like always. This was different, like...Something was pinning me down to the ground, making me stay.

"Ever heard of the three sisters?" He cut the silence, drawing his deep voice from within his chest. Was this scary story time?

"No." I gasped out in an awkward tone.

He shot me a glance, "It's an old wives tale, about three sisters who practiced voodoo and witchcraft?" He tried again.

I wasn't familiar with that particular wives tale, "I've never heard of it." I proclaimed.

"Take a walk with me." He stood to his feet, leaving his cup behind, and gesturing for me to take his hands so he could help me to my feet.

I took a deep breath, letting him help me up, "Some particular reason you don't want Toby to hear?"

"No, I just couldn't deal with the crackling of that fire anymore, all that noise is about to drive me insane." He spoke softly.

"Oh, well what about the three sisters?"

"They were witches." He continued, "They didn't ride around on broom sticks and they didn't quite fit into today's society, but as the times progressed, so did their blending in mechanism.

"The first sister, the warrior of the wind, she could control every aspect of the sway and brush of the wind. The second, the warrior of fire, she could control the brutality and mangled ways of the flame. The third, she was the warrior of water, she could bend water and move in any way she wanted it to go.

"They were the three people you wanted to go to when you wanted a curse lifted or put on someone; which wasn't uncommon during their time."

"Wait, so like fable witches?" I interrupted.

"Sort of, they had these beasts..I mean, not normal creatures. Creatures no one could explain where they had suddenly come from."

"Like?" I interrupted again.

"The warriors had different animals, their guides; the wind warrior got a huge pterodactyl-like bird. The fire warrior got a huge behemoth of a dog, he had two heads and could rip apart a village in just a few seconds. The last sister, the warrior of water, had a huge fish scaled-dragon-like monster that rose from the depths of the ocean when she called it."

"Why is this important?" I bothered him again.

"Just thought it was interesting."

"Why?"

"Because he likes stirring up trouble." My mother interjected, yanking me by my arm, away from him.


End file.
